Our Homes, Our Votes Celebrates National Voter Registration Day
NLIHC’s nonpartisan Our Homes, Our Votes campaign joined thousands of nonprofits, businesses, educational institutions, government agencies, and prominent voting rights advocates to celebrate National Voter Registration Day on Tuesday, September 17. National Voter Registration Day is a nationwide, nonpartisan day of action dedicated to celebrating our democracy and promoting voter registration opportunities. Our Homes, Our Votes project manager Courtney Cooperman joined the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness (MCAH), an NLIHC state partner and member of the Our Homes, Our Votes: 2024 Pilot Communities cohort, for two nonpartisan voter registration events in the Detroit metropolitan area.
MCAH and NLIHC started the day at Greenwood Villa, a senior housing community in Westland, MI. Lisa Chapman, director of public policy at MCAH, and Ashley Heidenrich, project coordinator at MCAH, led a group of residents in a game of nonpartisan election bingo. Staff also worked one-on-one with residents who needed to update their voter registration or confirm their registration status. In the evening, MCAH and NLIHC visited the Delonis Center, a homeless shelter and service center in downtown Ann Arbor. The team held conversations about voter registration with individuals, offered nonpartisan voter registration resources, and helped individuals register to vote over dinner and donuts.
If you or your organization celebrated National Voter Registration Day, email us at [email protected] so we can uplift your work!
New Our Homes, Our Votes Digital Resources: “Celebrating the Civic Holidays” and “User Guide to TurboVote”
Our Homes, Our Votes recently published two new digital resources: an overview of the nonpartisan Civic Holidays and a user guide to TurboVote, NLIHC’s nonpartisan voter registration and education platform. “Celebrating the Civic Holidays” describes the four nonpartisan Civic Holidays – National Voter Registration Day, National Voter Education Week, Vote Early Day, and Election Hero Day – and ideas that advocates, tenant leaders, and direct service providers can implement to celebrate each holiday.
The “User Guide to TurboVote” walks through the key features of TurboVote: registering to vote, confirming your voter registration, finding nonpartisan election information for your community, and signing up for reminders on TurboVote. The resource also covers best practices for organizations to incorporate TurboVote in their in-person and digital voter outreach, and how TurboVote can be used to track the impact of nonpartisan voter engagement activities.
The Civic Holidays resource can be found here and the TurboVote resource can be found here.
New Poll Reveals Housing Affordability Is a Priority Issue for Battleground Voters
The Tenant Union Federation and HouseUs released data from a poll, conducted by Lake Research Partners, that asked voters in battleground states about housing affordability and tenant protections. Eighty-six percent of respondents said housing affordability is a problem nationally, and 74% said it is a problem in their community.
According to the survey, support for tenant protections transcends partisan lines: 52% of Republicans, 63% of Independents, and 88% of Democrats believe it is important for the federal government to ensure basic protections for tenants. Fifty-nine percent of Republicans, 74% of Independents, and 91% of Democrats believe it is important for the federal government to regulate predatory landlords.
The poll also found that a majority of voters (64%) have a personal connection to housing instability, meaning that they have faced trouble paying rent, overcrowding, moving frequently or staying with relatives because of cost, or severe housing cost-burdens.
The poll was conducted among 1,000 registered voters in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin between July 17 and August 2, 2024.
An executive summary of the polling results from Lake Research Partners can be found here.
National Polling Access Audit Coalition Releases Toolkit for Advocates
The National Polling Access Audit Coalition, a group of state, local, and national organizations, recently released a toolkit that advocates can use to assess the accessibility of their polling places for voters with disabilities. The toolkit was born out of Detroit Disability Power’s poll access audit in the 2022 midterms – the largest poll access audit in U.S. history – which found that only 16% of polling locations across the Detroit metro area were fully accessible for voters with disabilities. Polling sites were considered inaccessible if they had access barriers in parking areas, entrances, Voter Assist Terminals, or voting booths. Fortunately, many of the barriers were relatively straightforward to address, and advocates can encourage their polling places to make simple fixes that will make their polling places accessible.
The Polling Place Accessibility Audit Toolkit guides advocates through the process of determining whether they are ready to conduct an audit, seeking an authorization for observation, developing an audit questionnaire, recruiting and training volunteers, conducting the audit, analyzing data, and using the results to organize for change.
Click here to access the toolkit and here to read Next City’s coverage of Detroit Disability Power’s poll access audit and advocacy.
U.S. Department of Justice Releases New Voting Rights Factsheet and Voter List Maintenance Guidance
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) released a new voting rights factsheet that reviews the key provisions of federal laws preventing discrimination and voter intimidation. The factsheet describes the provisions of federal civil rights law that prohibit intimidation, threats, and coercion throughout every stage of the voting process; bar discrimination on the basis of race, color, or language; guarantee access to assistance for people with disabilities or those unable to read and write; ensure that all aspects of voting are accessible to people with disabilities; and require certain jurisdictions to provide all election information in other commonly spoken languages.
The DOJ also published new guidance on voter list maintenance. The guidance outlines federal restrictions on removing people from the voter rolls and emphasizes the limits on using third-party requests to remove people from the voter rolls. Voter list maintenance procedures must be uniform and nondiscriminatory, and if a state is undertaking a list maintenance program to systematically remove ineligible voters, this process must be completed no later than 90 days before a federal election.
A complete summary of the guidance and factsheet can be found here.